Universal Science

"Universal Science" - if I can use such a term in the singular (probably
not a good idea) - moves beyond the compartmentalisation of standard
science, and seeks to provide a bigger picture, even a complete picture,
of the cosmos and all it's component
realities. As such Unified Science tends towards grand theories
of metaphysics, and esoteric
world-views. It would however be simplistic and incorrect to
call theories of universal science "esoteric"
and conventional science "exoteric".
Rather universal paradigms
of science are more strongly intuitive based, and in many cases are science-inspired
systems of metaphysics.

To briefly review some universal paradigms within Science (note,
the following list is terribly incomplete!):.

James Lovelock's Gaia
Hypothesis does away with the normal compartmentalisation of
the sciences into biology, geology, meteorology, etc etc, and looks instead
at the entire planet Earth as a single homeostatic system; that is, a system
that maintains it's own internal environment, it's own metabolism if you
will, at optimum conditions. Life for example is a homeostatic phenomenon,
and for this reason Dr Lovelock and his co-worker Dr Lyn Marguilis have
suggested that the Earth as a whole can be considered a living super-organism.
The human race, man as a conscious entity, is also part of this vasrt super-organism,
and man should not be so arrogant as to assume himself apart from or above
nature.

Note: although Lovelock's version of the Gaia hypotheis is still
science, indeed it is very much within the realm of physical, falsifiable,
even reductionist, science, the many spin-offs and developments
and interpretations of his superb hypothesis are not. That fact
does not make them incorrect. It simply means that
they are not science in the sense that it is defined here.

Professor Erich Jantsch's superb book The
Self Organising Universe incorporates the Gaia hypothesis and more,
much more. In fact this book, now sadly out of print, is perhaps
the best example of universal science I have ever come across. It
is presents an explanation of the universe, of the earth, of life, consciousness
and society, as evolving and self-developing, self-organising, autopoietic
structures. The same principles apply on every level and at every
stage of evolution. This is also what the new mathematical sciences
of fractals and chaos
theory also assert. Yet at the same time (which chaos theory
etc does not take into account) each new organisational level brings
a new stratum or aspect of consciousness
into play, a new form of "mind" unfolding in the universe.

Professor Jantsch's self-organising universe is profoundly evolutionary
in a way that Dr Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis is not. After all, once
Gaia has come into existence, what then? Gaia simply maintains her
metabolic state at optimum equilibrium. But Gaia does not (in Lovelock's
original formulation) evolve into greater or more superior states.

Jantsch in contrast observes three
evolutionary phases - physical, organic, and social evolution, with
the latter two characterised by a new grade of mind - metabolic mind and
neural mind, with the hint of a third mind, spiritual mind as the next
step.

This evolutionary paradigm, and even the same
series of stages, has also been independently described by two great
visionary teachers, the Jesuit palaeontologist
and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin
and the Indian yogi poet and visionary Sri
Aurobindo, perhaps the profoundest teacher of our or any age.

Yet accomplished philosophers, theologians, visionaries and mystics
as they were, and even in Teilhard's case scientist to boot (he
was instrumental in the discovery of Peking Man, but to be fair his paleontolgical
contributions in no way came anywhere near those of, say, von Heune or
G. G. Simpson), neither of them formulated a science as such (unless it
be in the metaphorical sense, e.g."science of yoga. But not a natural
science).

Goethean science
is a radical approach that is as much art as science, and involves a holistic
and unifying approach to the phenomena of nature. In marked contrast
to the mechanistic and rationalistic models of science (and even the universal
sciences described here so far are still rationalistic, even if they are
no longer mechanistic), it does away completely with the subject-object
dichotomy (well Quantum
Physics is the same ;-) and seeks to understand the processes
of nature through phenomenological experience and a sort of integration of
senses and imagination. The result is nature understood as an on-going
process of morphogenesis.

Yet for all this, Goethean science is still science, albeit a science
that is totally non-falsifiable. But it is science in that it explains
nature in a causal manner, according to specific laws and processes.
A powerful development of Goethian science has been the Annthroposophy
of Rudolph Steiner and his successors. This combines astonishingly
profound intuitive insights into the workings of nature with statements
of such childish absurdity that it is embarrassing that any adult could
believe it. In fact, even as myth or fantasy genre Steiner's accounts
of, say, the Lemurian and the Atlantean epoches are absurd. One of
my goals is to try to liberate the genuine insights of Goethean-Anthroposophical
science from the nonsensical elements (mostly deriving from Steiner's clairvoyant
visions) that are stifling it. Two things to junk first off would
be the anthropocentrism
and the young-earth
timescale. Untill this is done the Goethean-Anthroposophical
perspective can never work as even occult science. While originally
Goetheanism is simply too undeveloped, and does not accommodate the discoveries
of the last 170-odd years.